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Credit Niko J. Kallianiotis

After 25 Years, Confronting Alienation in Astoria

By John LelandMay. 17, 2013May. 17, 2013

Photographers have long turned to New York’s ethnic enclaves for stories of cultural tenacity in the face of sweeping change. When Niko J. Kallianiotis came to Astoria, Queens, on a 1987 family visit from Greece, he got none of that.

“I didn’t want to be there at all,” he said. For a teenager raised in Athens, he said, the ethnic identity in Astoria seemed forced, the stories it embodied ersatz. “They were trying to hold on to their Greek identity and also working hard to fit in,” he said. After one summer in what was then the center of Greek-American culture, he returned to Athens, vowing never to go back. “I refused to set foot in Astoria.”

Niko J. KallianiotisMike Kallos, on the stoop of his apartment on 31st Street, as his mother Theano Kallos let the dog out.

Twenty-five years later, Mr. Kallianiotis said he was drawn back to Astoria to explore the community that had so alienated him as a teenager. What benefits did people there get from their ethnic identity, and what did they give up? What he found was a changed neighborhood, no longer the tight enclave he had encountered as a teenager. Many of the old Greek families had left, and returned only to work. The younger residents no longer spoke Greek on the street, or alternated between Greek and English.

The fruits of his return, which he calls “Pikroglykimalon,” or “Bittersweetapple,” are both affectionate and aloof, reflecting what he calls “my alienation and eagerness to discover some sort of tranquility in a place that once felt so foreign to me.” The images suggest the photographer’s essential solitude, capturing rituals or institutions — the Greek Orthodox baptism, the neighborhood gyro stand — that are meant to forge solidarity and community, but seem to keep him (and us) on the outside, welcomed but not quite a part of what he sees.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to make this my home,” he said.

Niko J. KallianiotisThe Olympiakos Football Club on 30th Avenue is a gathering place for the team’s local fans, who watch the games each weekend via satellite or online stream. There are clubs for other teams nearby.